Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes)

Namespace collision

There is a namespace collision here, which is the use of the word People.

For example, Elbonian people should have a category, called Category:Elbonian, that has articles about these people, and then Category:Elbonian people would be the category containing people who *are* Elbonian. Do you see the problem? Normally, a category should match the lead article - but in this case, the lead article has the word people. In some cases, Elbonian may describe a language. So this all leads to much confusion at CFD.

I suggest we get out of this, perhaps by eschewing the use of the word "X people" for ethnic article titles, and coming up with something that won't cause a namespace collision with a category. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:22, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow, someone else who sees the point of "FOO" alone, without stating it; PRIMARYTOPIC for "FOO language" is necessarily "FOO" and a whole bunch of WP:TWODABS were created by WP:NCLANG which was created without reference to this guideline as it didn't exist yet still being part of the "people" guideline for individuals at the time. Coordination of guidelines should be mandatory especially regarding affected WikiProjects; we now have Inuvialuk people which resulted from the imposition of "FOO people" and "FOO language" on Inuvialuit and Inuvialuktun, which are both common in English whereas "Inuvaliuk people" and "Inuvaluk language" are not = Inuvialuk people directly means "individuals who are Inuvialuk". The imposition of retitling without reference to current usage in the region in question (not just with reference to linguistics/ethnology academic writings on the global scale) plus the "name preferred by the people themselves" and COMMONNAME and MOSTCOMMON mean those titles and similar cases should be moved back; I won't add them to the RM but file separate ones..... Skookum1 (talk) 03:54, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Are black people acceptable subjects for a list?

Is it acceptable under this guideline for a list to be formed around the concept of "black people"? This guideline is currently being cited on Talk:List of African-American Academy Award winners and nominees as the reason it was recently moved from List of black Academy Award winners and nominees and as an objection to moving it back. It has in the past been cited for the same thing in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of black fashion models. All indications are that the next one will be List of black Golden Globe Award winners and nominees. I can't see anything in this guideline that would prevent a list of black people but that is how it is being used and, if possible, I'd like more guidance on this guideline. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 15:29, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

change needed

I don't know if anyone here is aware of the fracas over the imposition of NCL on what had been standalone names that became disambiguated to "+people", on the premise that languages are equally a primary topic as the people who speak it; or that adding that is mandatory based on that guideline, which it's not. Often TWODABS result, and very often all there is from "FOO people" is a redirect to "FOO". The problem with the "FOO people" usage is that that more often means, especially in category names, "individuals who are FOO". More on all that another time, what caught my eye while scanning this guideline (NCET) was this:

A people should not be called a "tribe" unless they are actually a tribe (sub-ethnicity) rather than an ethnic group or a nation

that should be amended, because the "old convention" was that federally-recognized tribes would take the "tribe" dab, and lower-casing meant that it would be "FOO tribe". The term "nation" there is also problematic. All this was discussed before NCL was rewritten to enable the "+people" change in the "old consensus" evolved and in place for a long time before the author of that passage of NCL went on thousands of unnecessary renames/moves....and is now resisting the RMs I've launched on the titles he's changed, even though most of them are only redirects to the current title......and now as before in a string of RMs last year he foughtR tooth and nail against .including anglicizations that are unworkable, obsolete and in some cases derogatory (Slavey for Deh Cho/Sahtu, Dogrib for Tlicho, Chipeywan for Denesuline, I was one of the participants in the "old consensus" and have been meaning to come by and try and codify it for discussion here; among our conclusions/actions was deciding that whether "people", "tribe" or "nation", those terms have too many complications and are in many cases redundant (e.g. Haida just means "people", on Secpwepemc and St'at'imc and Nlaka'pamux the -mc/mx ending means people, similarly the "tin" ending on Athabaskan people names.... . And btw the example for the Walla Walla "tribe" is now "Walla Walla people", and IMO Sahaptin people should be pluralized, which I may be able to do if a redirect is not in the way.Skookum1 (talk) 03:51, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

There are tribes outside of the Americas. Some articles work better as FOO; some work better as FOO people. A one-size-fits-all solution does not work for the world's thousands of ethnic groups, as WP Ethnic groups discovered years ago. -Uyvsdi (talk) 04:16, 21 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Then why did the revision of NCL not take any of this into account? "some articles work better as FOO" etc., similar to which I've seen other discussions you were in to the same effect. "FOO people" has a bad problem, as you yourself opined re Category:Squamish/Category:Squamish people and when not needed to disambiguate it should not be used.Skookum1 (talk) 04:59, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

there was also no consensus for adding "preferred"

Re this you yourself, Uysvdi, have complained and taken action on the ambiguity of "FOO people". Discussions about this on the People and Ethnic groups naming conventions pages said nothing about including "preferred" in the table. What "consensus" was there for that???Skookum1 (talk) 05:11, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Previous discussions

Since this article was cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people), the previous discussions that led to the development of these guidelines can be found here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)/Archive 7. -Uyvsdi (talk) 05:16, 21 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi

And yet, even though it's lifted from an approved/RfC'd guideline, we have someone claiming it's not valid. And I'm looking for that particular cut/lift, partly to see if and by who 'preferred' (which is POV on this matter IMO) and where the claim (disputed by yourself in many places) that "FOO people" is "unambiguous".Skookum1 (talk) 06:06, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

What the guidelines say

This also applies to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) as both sets of guidelines are being quoted. According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) the correct procedure is "Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with "language". If however the language is the primary topic for a title, there is no need for this."

This guideline says ""Elbonian people" is preferred as a neutral and unambiguous term. "Ethnic Elbonians" and "Elbonians" are also acceptable. Generally speaking, the article title should use the common English language term for an ethnic group." and "How the group self-identifies should be considered. If their autonym is commonly used in English, it would be the best article title."

I have recently seen comments that give the impression some people believe the guidelines mandate or dictate that articles about Foo (be it the people or language) must always be at "Foo people" and "Foo language" (see here and here). However, the guideline does not say that, and can't say that because to do so would make it opposed to the policy Wikipedia:Article titles. In some cases the people article will be the predominant term and the should be at "Foo" with the language (assuming it has the same name) at "Foo language". Of course if the language of the people of "Foo" is called "Fooable" and it can be shown to be a common term then it should be at that title instead.

So because of the belief in what the guidelines do not actually say we currently have things like Inuvialuk (a disambiguation) which has links to Inuvialuk people and Inuvialuk language. The word Inuvialuk is rarely used in English. The most common terms for the people and language are Inuvialuit and Inuvialuktun. So rather than having the articles, this applies to other articles but those were the ones I'm most familiar with, at titles that follow the policy and guidelines they are at titles that appear to be little used outside of Wikipedia.

I don't think that either guideline needs to be rewritten but that some clarification in them in required so it is obvious that there is not always a requirement for articles to be at "Foo language" and "Foo people". CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not eager to jump into this considering the recent climate; however, the unilateral moves of Foo to "Foo people" have stopped in the last year. Every time I find a disambiguation page with two links, I've redirected to the primary topic (usually, but not always, the ethnic group; sometime the language article is the primary topic, based on page views, incoming links, etc.), and these redirects have not been reverted. The discussion that developed these guidelines Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)/Archive 7#New proposal for "Articles on peoples (ethnicities and tribes)" included people with different perspectives and was highly productive. One challenge is, even though trends will develop among WP:WP IPNA editors, people editing ethnic groups outside of the Americas have their own protocals, and WP:WikiProject Ethnic groups is no longer very active. Another challenge is this page is not easy to find; perhaps it needs to be linked from more places? -Uyvsdi (talk) 17:07, 23 March 2014 (UTC)Uysvdi

You'll notice that "Elbonian", the bare root, is not given in the examples of good titles, and this was very much on purpose. This is what many of the recent disputes have been about, like the Beothuk people → Beothuk discussion that led me here. If we're to go that way, then, to be consistent across the world, English people should be moved to English, with the latter moved to English (disambiguation), and the same for Germans, Russians, etc. Now, maybe that is the best way to go, but what we should not have are separate conventions for Americans (or just Canadians) or whoever.

I also think its a bad idea to decide primary topic based on page views, so that sometimes "Foo" is about the people, and sometimes about the language. The main reason for the current consensus was to avoid that and the inevitable (and likely both passionate and idiotic) arguments that would ensue. When a language is named after a people, then the people are the primary topic, and it would be odd to have the language occupy the base name and the people be the dependent article. But it would also be odd to have a 13-word stub on the people be the primary article when the language article is 13 paragraphs. Our previous consensus, that neither should be accorded primary status, was an attempt to avoid such problems. It may be that we should revisit that idea, but I think we should come to some agreement on if and how to change before we start setting up walled gardens of regional conventions. — kwami (talk) 07:09, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

"You'll notice that "Elbonian", the bare root, is not given in the examples of good titles" - actually, yes, it is. Innumerable ethnic group articles follow this naming convention and have for years. Again, WP Ethnic groups, after years of discussion, determined there is no single solution to naming ethnic groups. Primary topic is also determined by incoming links, Google book searches, etc. as outlined in Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Determining a primary topic. Myself and many other editors who actively create ethnic group articles were never part of the discussion of "Our previous consensus," wherever it may have occurred. There is a pre-existing Wikipedia policy against wp:twodabs. Every ethnic group should clearly link to the corresponding language article, and vice versa. That way the users can most quickly find the articles they want (it's the user, after all, that any of this exists). -Uyvsdi (talk) 23:26, 24 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Basically these guidelines just reinforce implementation of Wiki pre-existing policies—how primary topics are determined, how dab pages are handled, and that move proposals need to be discussed and consensus built before a move can happen.-Uyvsdi (talk) 07:09, 25 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Which is partly why they have to be handled on a one-by-one basis, especially when in namespace conflict with settlement and region names; despite my most ardent opponent maintaining he wants a discussion (=delay) on the overall guidelines; an RfC on the shortcomings of NCL is indeed called for, and it's time that UNDAB had one too so it cannot be downplayed as "only an essay" even though everything it says is already in TITLE and elsewhere. Similarly WP:NCET may have had only two authors for far, but that bespeaks neglect, and also its fairly recent creation. One question for you - who was it that added "preferred" to the table that was transferred from NCP? And given your opposition and action to "FOO people" elsewhere, how could you ever maintain that "FOO people" was unambiguous; it is in relation to other dabs like "nation", "tribe" etc, but "people who are FOO" was your own point about this. Please explain that conundrum, and why NCL says what it does, if so. Don't tell me "consensus" decided that, that was hardly a large discussion, really not much more than NCET which certain others are trying to downplay for its two-editor authorship (unless you count all those at NCP like yourself who developed that section).Skookum1 (talk) 10:01, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Uyvsdi has replied about the Elbonian example. But if you look again at what I copied from the guideline page it says ""Elbonian people" is preferred as a neutral and unambiguous term. "Ethnic Elbonians" and "Elbonians" are also acceptable. I'll also point out that Russian people and German people are redirects to Russians and Germans. American people, Canadian people, Cree people and Inuk people (which does not actually exist) are all redirects to Americans, Canadians, Cree and Inuit. So there is no consistency across the Wikipedia world. Have there actually been any attempts to move move those articles? By the way I never said that all the articles about groups of people should be at "foo" as opposed to "Foo people". In fact I would be surprised to see that English was the title for English people. At a guess I would think the most likely meaning of English would be for the language. Also it was never my intention to suggest that all articles about people should be the primary and that would be decided on page views. Whichever is the most common term would be the main target, be in people, language or something else. The idea that all articles about groups of people should be at "Foo people" is not practical either as this guideline recognises. I am not trying to set up a special application for a particular region or country but trying to apply what the guidelines say. The only reason that my interest is in Aboriginal Canadians is because I am more familiar with them than ones in other countries. In the recent set of RMs I don't think I voiced an opinion on some of the US ones because I was not sure about them.

There's scads of such titles "FOOS" everwhere, and some e.g. Sorbs have categories named Category:Sorbian people which was moved from Category:Sorbs for unknown reasons, given the title of the main article; I've quizzed the author of Cydebot about that as to who and why; just in Category:Ethnic groups in Europe alone, without including subcats there are around 20 "FOO people" titles, and around 37 with "FOOS" or variants thereof; it is similar in subcats such as Category:Lusatia where we also find non-English names like Milceni; so re the objection that someone made in one of the closed bulk RMs that "FOO people" was a standard and was already in use as the only proper form of a title, IMO that "preferred" bit should come out of the guideline forthwith, likewise the false statement that the "FOO people" construction is "unambiguous", which it most certainly is not.Skookum1 (talk) 10:08, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Another example of the presence of the "Elbonians" form can be seen in Category:Germanic peoples where there are 25 articles as "FOOs" and only four as "FOO people" (not including the Alsatians (people) redirect, whichever class of the formula that would fall in).Skookum1 (talk) 10:12, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I looked today at articles in other parts of Wikipedia to see how they were handled. In the case of flora most articles are at the binomial name rather than the common name, Dryas octopetala rather than Mountain avens. That makes sense because they tend to have one scientific name but multiple common names. But even so there are some exceptions such as Mock strawberry and Lily of the Valley. For fauna there is a mixture of common and binomial names. So you have polar bear, Ursus americanus carlottae, Arctic fox, Vipera berus, Ailuropoda. Cities are all over the place. US cities are supposed to be at "City, state". So you get Albuquerque as a redirect to Albuquerque, New Mexico but Boston is where the US city is. In general other cities are at the "city" but there are some that are at "city, subdivision" when there is no need.

Another problem with one size fits all is that it is not always neutral and unambiguous. For example there is the article about the First Nations people that live in the area around Yellowknife who are called the Yellowknives, which is what the call themselves and here (has sound). Now according to one interpretation of the the guidelines that article should be at Yellowknife people but that would be confusing as it could be about people from or of Yellowknife and not neutral as it's not used. The same applies to the use of Inuvialuk people which is not used very much (if at all, hard to tell now because of Wikipedia mirrors and such) not only makes it non-neutral but original research.

By the way what about languages? There is no Inuk language as an article or redirect but there is an article on Inuit languages. One would think that based on the misinterpretation of the guidelines that Inuktitut should actually be at Inuk language. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 04:48, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Just to note in reply that Cree, Inuit, Inuvialuit, Mi'kmaq, Haida, St'at'imc, Ktunaxa are also plural forms as are many others of that kind; Haida is sometimes pluralized by adding -s but that's not mandatory and not regularly seen as much as "the Haida" referring to the collective (without "people" being attached 9 times out of 10).Skookum1 (talk) 14:56, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

No-one's arguing that they shouldn't be at FOOs, just that per the guideline they shouldn't be at FOO. BTW, if you're going to argue that the name for the people appears without the word "people" attached 9 times out of 10, it's also true that the name for the language appears without the word "language" attached 9 times out of 10. By that logic, Cree language should be moved to "Cree", Haida language to "Haida", etc. — kwami (talk) 11:18, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

re the group/people stubs and why it is they're not developed, and what can be done

Re"

• ". When a language is named after a people, then the people are the primary topic, and it would be odd to have the language occupy the base name and the people be the dependent article. But it would also be odd to have a 13-word stub on the people be the primary article when the language article is 13 paragraphs."

It's not like that's the group-articles' fault....and no reason at all to argue for a split decision on language vs group as equal contenders for PRIMARYTOPIC: the "old consensus" which is not the five-editor "our consensus" being referred to in sentences following that can be seen all over the category structure; i.e. the separation of group, government, reserve and/or community, and language articles and categories. The feeling at the time was (and I have already listed some of the major contributors to that collective of very considerate and cooperative thinking) that the "groups" (I'm avoiding the word "people" at this point) were ultimately the primary topic and that's why their categories (and originally their main articles) were all stand-alone undisambiguated titles. "Your" consensus should have done some research before bludgeoning its small-group thinking across titles that are not language articles. Hut never mind that for now, though it's obvious that using one guideline alone, and applying it in a very narrow-minded fashion against th spirit of the underlying principles, is clearly proscribed by WP:Wikilawyering.Skookum1 (talk)

Point is that the lack of coverage of ethnographic content, vs the heavy-on-the-technical side "specialist" linguist articles (which are not "reader friendly" and because of the reliance on older, specialized sources and their out-of-date terminologies are perpetrating older usages and RMs and other debates about them persistently downplay modern usages and developing realities in modern indigenous cultural and political life. Concomitant with that was respect for self-identification, which finally reached guideline status after being left out of the loop for a very long time; and indigenous sensitivities were to be taken into account in all titling and writing. THAT was also part of the "old consensus" in a very big way but that has been shoved aside and a consensus formed by a much smaller group, with narrow linguistics interests and "prejudices", has wound up adding unnecessary disambiguations and changing the nature of the PRIMARYTOPIC perceptions and good judgment of the collective decisions and joint actions of the "old consensus" which underlays the category structure and the "separation of articles of different topics" principle (WP:GOODJUDGMENT and WP:COMMONSENSE both deserve essays; they are in short supply around here, but were factors in the "old consensus"....). "Indigenous sensitivity" has been derided and downplayed via out-of-context invocations of NOTCENSORED and RIGHTGREATWRONGS....... and as feared if that were to happen, interest from potential indigenous contributors is low (when they come to a page featuring an archaic and at times offensive or incorrect names for themselves because of the reliance on older RS and narrow specialist interests, they just shrug and don't bother; or complain and are told that they don't matter and that they're not cited so shut up etc.); at least one indigenous editor at Wikipedia (OMR) has left because of this; Phaedriel left for reasons of harassment here, and also to pursue family life.Skookum1 (talk)

So to amend that, since those writing language articles show very little interest, or empathy for native culture in fact ("contempt" would be a better word...), I have started a campaign, joined by Kmoksy and I hope others, to explore other-language Wikipedias for more content for those articles; see here. Suffice to say German "group" articles are often way more extensive than their language articles, and the categories for groups and languages respectively are more heavily developed for groups than languages. Their group articles also make no separation with government content, when it exists (many are for vanished groups which until now had no Wikipedia article at all), are the same article, which does account for some of the longer content. I also note they don't play disambiguation or guideline games, and that's likely why more work has been put into coverage of ethnography (and current sociopolitical/cultural realities) than has yet, for the most part, been seen here. Skookum1 (talk)

It's a question of priorities...and the "old consensus" adjudged the groups themselves, and their self-identification and respect for that and for their cultures, as being of primary importance; THAT consensus (Uysvdi it was over by the time you joined IPNA; that's why you have been unaware of it; there was no central location like IPNA, though some of it may be found in archives there, or linked from discussions there; it's spread over various talkpages of the day, and various user pages, often of valuable contributors like User:Luigizanasi, who hasn't been with us since 2008. Skookum1 (talk)

If someone feels so compelled as to change a group article's title on behalf of a language guideline, doncha think they should also take the time to learn about the people over whose language they are studying/writing about? Doncha think they should care what those people think about what they find about themselves in Wikipedia? I guess not. It surprises me that modern linguistics continues to ignore actual connection with the peoples under study to update their terminology, but academia's failings are many; perpetrating the past and not keeping up with the times or with modern usage is something you'd think educated people would care about; but apparently not.Skookum1 (talk)

The narrow field of view of academia, particularly at the graduate level, means that topics like language get written up with an extremely narrow, confined set of parameters; language is part of culture though "the beating heart of a people" as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it (or so, that's a paraphrase/excerpt of something I found on a band website somewhere; not just phonology and syntax et al, it's important to the groups who remain and in some cases are today rebounding back, and should not be viewed in isolation from language; but it is. And so we have a plethora of very technical articles on languages, using out of date names, and very little work at all on the ethnographic coverage or modern cultural polity of the people speaking (or reviving) those languages; even Canadian English is being given short shrift as a "walled garden"....as if linguistics wasn't....Skookum1 (talk)

The solution to "odd" stubs is to EXPAND them - not just rejig their names....geez you might learn something in the process. Language is only part of culture, it is not its equal; again, "the old consensus" embraced the view that the peoples, and respect for them, is of primary importance. Technical specialist articles are interesting (for those who can understand all the arcane terminology that is); but even language articles need more content accessible to the general reader; overwhelmingly they are not. Both they and the group articles - and the band articles and the reserve/reservation and community articles also need a lot of expansion. And that takes reading and learning......and more than just tweaking IPA and infoboxes.Skookum1 (talk) 13:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)